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It's About People, Not Plumbing

When Kenny Chapman, owner of Peterson Plumbing,
Heating and Air Conditioning, left the Army in late 1992, he knew one thing: He
didn’t want to work for someone else.

But with no business training and no money, he went back to his hometown of
Grand Junction, Colo., worked some low-paying jobs and continued to dream of
becoming an entrepreneur. Fortunately for him, a couple of entrepreneurial
uncles encouraged him and gave him books on business to read.

After leaving the company for a few years, John Burwell Jr. took over running the day-to-day operations in 1999.

At the same time, he had a real estate agent
giving him information on businesses for sale in the area. One was a
drain-cleaning business with four trucks and bringing in about $100,000 a year.
To a guy making $6 an hour, this sounded like a great opportunity. But the
asking price of $250,000 was too much for him, so he kept at his lumberyard
job.

It was at the lumberyard where he met a drain-cleaning guy who built houses on
the side. It was a one-truck company, and the guy took drain-cleaning jobs when
he felt like it. As you may have guessed, customer service was not his strong
point.

Chapman began talking to him about selling his business. “I remembered the
listing from the other drain-cleaning company, so I knew there was money in
it,” he recalls. “But I had no background in drain cleaning or business. I had
no business being in business - it was a train wreck waiting to happen.”

Eventually the two came to an understanding, and in 1994 Chapman became the
owner of Rooter King. He went on a few ride-alongs, but basically learned drain
cleaning with on-the-job training.

But he wasn’t happy. “I started to see some opportunity, but I’m not from the
industry,” he says. “I never wanted to be a plumber; I wanted to be a business
owner.”

So he continued to learn and read about business. In 2000, one particular book
struck a chord with him - Michael Gerber’s “E-Myth.” Chapman wanted to learn
more, so soon after he attended the E-Myth Academy in
California.

“I saw the opportunities there; I realized that I could create systems in the
company to run the company, but I was too impatient to create them all myself,”
he says.

Peterson Plumbing has weekly “team-member” meetings. Kenny Chapman
attends as many as he can when he’s not conducting training sessions for Nexstar.

Building Relationships

One of Chapman’s first mistakes came with his
acquisition of Peterson Plumbing. The four techs quit and each went out and
started his own company - in a very small market. Chapman didn’t understand
until later that he hadn’t established any kind of relationship with the techs,
which resulted in uncertainty and resentment by them.

He began looking for help in the industry and came upon Nexstar, which he
joined in early 2001. With the information he acquired and the mentors he had
there, coupled with his E-Myth Academy experience, Chapman began to see the way
to make his entrepreneurial dream come true.

“I had the desire but I didn’t have the how-to until I joined Nexstar and began
to see what was really possible in this industry,” he explains.

Chapman’s next acquisition was an HVAC company. He took the time to build the
relationships he needed with the employees, or team members as they are called
at Peterson. Two years later, his latest acquisition, a heating and
air-conditioning company, went even smoother.

Building relationships is a constant state at Peterson Plumbing - relationships
with clients, relationships with employees, relationships with the industry.

“It’s a people business, it’s not about plumbing,” Chapman says. “At the end of
the day, any company in any market anywhere can fix the client’s problem. We
have to focus on the people. And if you focus on your client, then you have to focus
on the people you’re putting in front of your client. The quality of your
service or the quality of what you do is only as good as the quality of the
people that are around you. If you surround yourself with successful people, it
rubs off.”

Chapman’s right-hand man is general manager, John Burwell Jr. He has a sales
background and met Chapman through the car-cleaning business he started. He
began helping Chapman with the business before joining the company full time.

Burwell left the company for awhile - he got married, moved to Denver and began
his family. He came back to Peterson in 1999 with the intent to help Chapman
grow the company, but he didn’t want to get back in a
truck.

“Kenny had a desire to become a consultant at that time, and my goal was to run
the company,” Burwell explains. “He’s respectful of my position; Kenny’s
biggest thing is development of his people.”

Now Burwell runs the day-to-day operations at the company. Chapman doesn’t have
an office at the company and he travels a fair amount as a Nexstar trainer (he
believes he has an obligation to give back to the industry), but the two still
communicate daily, either through e-mail or on cell phones. The company has
weekly team-member meetings, and Chapman is there when his schedule allows,
talking to the staff and driving home the goals of the
company.

“The quality of the people we have at Peterson makes us what we are,” Burwell
notes. “The greatest advantage we have as a company is within our walls. Our
team members are an integral part of the company’s success.”

In the down economy that we are all living through right now, Chapman believes
it is the time to focus internally rather than externally. There are many
opportunities to reduce costs inside your business that you haven’t been
looking at because it’s been too easy for too many years, he says. Tighten your
operations and get better at your company’s core competencies. As other PHC
businesses go under, it’s a chance to gain market share.

People development is a passion at Peterson Plumbing, which includes training and the occasional foosball game.

Kelly Faloon was a former editor of Plumbing & Mechanical as well as the BNP Media Plumbing Group’s Integrated Content Development Specialist. She also was a former editor of the Radiant Comfort Guide the Radiant & Hydronics Report — both official publications of the Radiant Professionals Alliance — and twice-monthly Radiant & Hydronics eNews, an enewsletter for anyone interested in the world of heating with hot water.

Her editorial specialties included women in plumbing, recruiting for the trades, green construction techniques, water conservation, water treatment, hydronic heating, radiant heating and cooling, snow melt, solar thermal and geothermal.

After a 3½-year stint at sister publication Supply House Times, Faloon joined the PM staff in December 2001 as senior editor. She was named PM’s managing editor in 2006 and editor in 2013.

Previously, she spent nearly 10 years at CCH, a publishing firm specializing in business and tax law, where she wore many hats — proofreader, writer/editor for a daily tax publication, and Internal Revenue Code editor.

A native of Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula, Faloon is a 1986 journalism graduate of Michigan State University.

Events

ON DEMAND:Most people will recognize that word of mouth is your best form of marketing. Whether they’re recommending your store to their close circle or sharing their feelings on an online review site, what they say can go a long way toward convincing potential customers to do business with you. So what can you to harness the voice of your customers and make sure it is reaching the right people at the right time?

Products

Revised to include details on the latest technologies, Valve Handbook, Third Edition, discusses design, performance, selection, operation, and application. This updated resource features a new chapter on the green technology currently employed by the valve industry, as well as an overview of the major environmental global standards that process plants are expected to meet.

Check out November 2018 issue of Plumbing & Mechanical , featuring our Cargo Vans model year 2019, a vehicle build for your business, a few guidelines to installing a tankless water heater , and much more.